Tia neighbour ‘gave police false sighting after murder’

A neighbour of murdered schoolgirl Tia Sharp wasted police time by claiming he saw her leave her grandmother’s house when she was already dead, a court heard today.

Stuart Hazell, 37, who was the lover of Christine Sharp, Tia’s grandmother, had strangled 12-year-old Tia the previous night and hid her body in the loft of the house in New Addington, Surrey, in August last year. In May, Hazell admitted her murder and was jailed for life.

Hazell told police he had not seen Tia after she left to go shopping in Croydon and Paul Meehan’s evidence seemed to confirm this, Croydon magistrates’ court heard.

Prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward said Meehan had not been “in league” with Hazell, but might have been trying to “enhance his importance in the police investigation”.

Two days after Tia disappeared, Meehan told police he had been four feet from her as she left the house for the bus stop. Miss Ledward said: “He claimed his account was 100 per cent true and said, ‘In my heart I know it was Tia walking down that path. I’m 100 per cent sure that I saw her.’”

When Tia’s body was found a week later and Hazell was arrested, Meehan told detectives: “I definitely saw her leave the house, whether she came back I don’t know.”